8/31/2006 @ 6:00PM

The Problem With St. Ignucius

No single product has done more to fuel the Cheap Revolution than Linux. This free operating system runs in Wall Street banks and Hollywood special effects shops, on supercomputers and smart phones,
TiVo
boxes and network routers. Talk about momentum.
Red Hat
is on track to do $400 million in sales this year.
Novell
has just produced a Linux desktop so sleek that I didn’t want to return the demo machine they loaned me, and I just bought a copy for my office PC.

Now, some of the hackers who started this wonderful free software movement are threatening to screw the whole thing up.

The trouble involves Richard M. Stallman, the anti-corporate radical who runs the Free Software Foundation and controls the license under which Linux is distributed.

Stallman is drafting a new version of the license, adding restrictions that will make it more difficult for companies like
Hewlett-Packard
,
IBM
, Novell
and Red Hat
to work with Linux.

The new license is called the GNU General Public License version 3, or GPLv3. It will replace the current one, called GPLv2.

HP has asked Stallman to eliminate a clause that would prevent companies that distribute GPLv3 programs from bringing patent infringement claims against those programs in the future. Stallman has refused to remove the clause.

And Linus Torvalds, who created Linux 15 years ago while he was a college student, doesn’t like another GPLv3 clause that would prohibit companies from using GPLv3 code to create digital rights management (DRM) schemes. Torvalds says he won’t adopt the new license and will stick with GPLv2 instead.

Problem is, Torvalds only controls the “kernel” of the operating system, which represents just 5% of the total operating system. Many of the other parts will move to the new license.

This could create a headache for companies like Red Hat, the top distributor of Linux. Red Hat’s operating system is actually a collection of hundreds of programs, including some created by coders who will adopt GPLv3.

It’s not clear yet whether companies can ship products that merge v2 code with v3 code, according to Diane Peters, general counsel at Open Source Development Labs, a Linux development center, since the two licenses seem to be incompatible.

One solution would be for Red Hat to shun GPLv3 code and instead stick with components that were released under GPLv2. That may be doable, but it won’t be easy. Red Hat would have to start maintaining all these pieces on its own, and its version would “fork” away from versions that others develop under GPLv3.

This means, of course, more complexity, more confusion and more delays. HP says the patent language alone will cause it to spend more time scrutinizing GPLv3 code before it dares to distribute even a single line.

Basically, two camps within the Linux community are facing off: the pragmatists, like Torvalds and the corporations, versus the extremists, led by Stallman.

Stallman says his priority is to “protect against threats to our community’s freedom.” He says he’ll try to make HP happy, but if he can’t, “we will just have to live with their displeasure.”

Pragmatists say that if Stallman insists on keeping the current DRM and patent language in the GPLv3, the license will be shunned, and Stallman and his Free Software Foundation will become irrelevant.

Perens says if Torvalds doesn’t adopt GPLv3, extremists will create a new operating system using a different kernel.

So far, Stallman has produced two drafts and still has one more to go. He is soliciting input from corporations, so pragmatists hope he’ll accommodate them in his finished version, due in January or February 2007.

Yet Stallman isn’t the accommodating type. In a Michael Moore-like publicity stunt, he recently tried to present the French prime minister with a petition about copyright law. (Security guards rebuffed his attempt.)

And if Stallman caves in to corporations, he’ll be branded a sellout by his acolytes, who worship him like a software messiah. (Stallman fuels this, with at least a wink, by referring to himself as “St. IGNUcius.”)

Companies like HP, IBM, Novell and Red Hat have pushed Linux into thousands of customers’ homes and businesses, promoting it with a happy penguin logo and a feel-good marketing campaign about sharing and freedom.

They’ve neglected to mention Stallman and his radical, anti-corporate movement, which began in 1985 when Stallman published his software call to arms, “The GNU Manifesto.”

Now they may have some explaining to do.

Red Hat’s customers, for example, may worry about the fact that Red Hat doesn’t actually control the license for its code. Red Hat also may have to explain to its investors how its $5 billion market valuation is being held hostage by “St. Ignucius” and his pack of extremists. (Red Hat’s spinners insist this is not the case.)

My bet is that Stallman isn’t going to roll over for the corporations. My bet is he’ll stick to his guns.

If so, 2007 will be the watershed year when open-source vendors–which have tolerated Stallman for years as if he’s some kind of annoying but basically harmless crazy uncle–finally decide they’re tired of his bullying and buffoonery and cut him loose.

As Billy Marshall, a former Red Hat exec and now CEO of Linux distributor rPath, puts it: “Generally, extremists do get shaken off.”

But family feuds can be ugly, and you can bet Stallman won’t go quietly. Next year could be a rough one for Linux.

And yes, the snickering you hear in the background is
Bill
Gates
Bill Gates
, who is loving every minute of this.